Cecilia
by Juliet Atharis
Summary: "Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl."


Author's Notes: Yet another "from the perspective of" VS story, this time from Cecilia and in diary format. Kinda. Read, review, send chocolate, whatever.   
  
I don't own anything from The Virgin Suicides, yadda yadda, although at times I wish I owned Josh Hartnett. Then again, if I did, my sister would claw me to death for him.  
  
*Cecilia*  
  
~Sometime in summer, 197-  
  
Thirteen is the worst possible age someone can be. Why can't I just skip this year and be fourteen? Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese seem so happy being the ages they are, and then there's me, who's just getting into what older ladies call (in syrupy voices) "the joy of growing up." What's so joyful about it? The thing that really makes me angry is that they call bleeding insanely between your legs for a week "the joy of preparing to become a mother." Excuse me, but I don't plan to be a mother for at least another ten years. I guess it all stemmed from the olden days when forty-year-old men would marry thirteen-year-old girls (God, that would be like marrying my dad) and expect them to have children within a year. When I tell my sisters how angry I am about all this, they just give me a "You're such a funny little girl, Cece" look and go back to whatever they were doing. That just makes me even angrier. Most of the time, we're extremely close, but then their seniority complexes kick in and they just view me as their little baby sister. Come to think of it, Lux really doesn't deserve to have a seniority complex. She's not *that* much older than I am. And she doesn't mind the very thing I hate: boys. Either she knows some really mature boys, or she just throws herself at every member of the opposite sex that she finds attractive. All the boys I know look at me like hungry wolves, like they want to grab me and drag me into a secluded corner. I get the same looks from grown men sometimes. It's disgusting. It's further proof that thirteen is indeed an unlucky number. I start bleeding between my legs, men look at me hungrily, my parents get upset with me more easily, I cry often, and nothing goes my way. The pressure being placed on me by parents and teachers is increasing. I'm being crushed by it. I can't handle all their assignments and demands. The world is being slowly destroyed. The tree out in the front yard has been marked for death, there is a new animal on the Endangered Species list nearly every week, and the air is becoming polluted. Why should I stay alive in a world that is gradually being poisoned and is going to kill me anyway?  
  
~Sometime later than when I wrote last time, 197-  
  
They put me in the damn hospital. I told Therese, Bonnie, Mary, and Lux that I was going to try to leave, and I wanted them to come after me in a year. I didn't make it, but I'm going to try again. My sisters are still leaving in a year. When I tried, I tried the most common way, the way everyone knows how to go. The doctors all look at me like I'm an exhibit in a zoo. I'm going to have nasty scars on my wrists, but it won't matter. No one's going to have long to look at them anyway. Everyone calls me "the weird sister" because of everything I've done. I have a pack of tarot cards in my room and I know how to read palms, yet I was holding a picture of the Virgin Mary in the bathtub. The picture comforted me. It took my mind off of dying. But now I'm the oddity of the Lisbon family. I don't fit into the picture of normalcy that my sisters create.  
  
~Still later, 197-  
  
I've decided to try again. Apparently, Mom and Dad talked to Dr. Horniker and basically he said that all of us girls are screwed up because we haven't hung out with boys our ages. Right. Obviously, he's never been around Lux for a long period of time. Anyway, Mom and Dad are letting us invite boys to the house for a "party." Some party it's gonna be. We'll just stand around looking uncomfortable for two hours, then the boys will go home. Lux will flirt (she's such a tease), the rest of my sisters will smile, and I'll sit in the corner with my scars and my turned-down mouth. At least until I go upstairs. My bedroom window overlooks the big spiked fence that we have in the front yard. If I land on it just right, it'll work. If not, then I get locked in the hospital's psych ward for a long time.   
  
~Later, 197-  
  
The party's tonight. My sisters offered to hide my scars so no one will stare at them. Like putting anything on them is gonna make them less noticeable. Thinking of this makes me want to die even more. I'll always be "the freak with the wrist scars." Even when I get used to being "a mature girl," even when I keep living in a world that is slowly falling apart, I'll always have the scars and the shame that goes with them. No one can look at you like you're a freak if you're dead. 


End file.
